


Every Touch Until

by Leidolette



Category: Blue Castle - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Discussion of Pregnancy, F/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 16:05:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16875930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: Everyone deserves a little happiness before they die.





	Every Touch Until

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misantlery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misantlery/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide 2018!

**SUMMER**

They had relations the first night they were married. Barney had been very uncertain about this aspect of their relationship when Valancy had first proposed, and had decided early on to simply let it play out as it would. A bolder man might have set down in stone the rules for all kinds of intimacies in such a strange marriage as theirs on the very night he'd agreed to this whole arrangement, but even Barney Snaith couldn't bring himself to be that blunt. 

He'd kissed Valancy when they stepped onto Mistawis and shown her around, called her a chum and didn't think of her as his wife. He never truly would think of Valancy as his wife until much later, after the train and after she'd already left him. It wasn't until Valancy had made the choice to live on Mistowis for the second time that she'd irrevocably become his wife in his heart.

But all that was far in the future, and Barney, as unsuspecting of what lies ahead as the rest of us, took Valancy from place to place on the island that day without the air of a man proudly showing his home to a friendly acquaintance.

Perhaps it was this air of lightness that pushed any thoughts of lovemaking from his mind, that left him so surprised when Valancy followed him into the bedroom ( _their_ bedroom, he suddenly remembered) when it was nearly time to prepare for supper and reached out her warm hand to touch his back.

Barney stiffened, and turned around. Her hand stayed on him and came to rest on his upper arm as they looked at each other face-to-face. Those eyes, again. Dark, and full of a question he wasn't sure she knew how to ask.

He kissed her, and hoped it was the answer. It certainly was for him. He led without really leading. Valancy kissed back, and indicated with looks and touches that seemed very small to him, but, judging by Valancy's crimson blush and what he knew of her upbringing, must have seemed to her as brazen and obvious as an electric marquee.

There was the distant whistle of a train, and Valancy pulled back, lips pink. He breathed in and out and watched Valancy's face touched by the first pinks and oranges of the just setting sun.

She was hesitating again. The constraints of her old life waiting to slide up and strangle her like vines beneath the skin. She had beaten them back mightily to date, but they were weeds growing out of the past and hard to kill off once and for all. He would cut them down for her if he could, but only she could do it.

He should know -- he had a couple vines round his neck of his own.

"Holding steady, there?" He was not quite sure what to ask.

"Yes," she said. "I want this, and I want you."

"You sure do go after what you want." His hands came up to her shoulders and he traced her prominent collar bones with his thumbs. Valancy's presence in his house was proof enough of her will.

Valancy shook her head, face still tight. "I never used to be that way. I never wanted out loud, just drifted." She paused, eyes darting to the floor, then back to his. "My mother used to tell me that it's not maidenly to think about men."

Barney laughed. Valancy looked startled at first, then smiled too. "I suppose it is all very silly and stiff, isn't it?" Valancy said. "I can see that now. But there is something more."

"Oh?"

"I know..." Valancy took a deep breath. "I know how babies are made. And I don't want them."

Barney started to nod, but Valancy interrupted him, or, rather, interrupted herself. "Oh, I actually do want them! I dream of a little fat-cheeked baby to call my own. But, I just _can't_ now. It wouldn't be fair to anyone." Valancy looked intently at him, her eyes searching his face. "I feel I've bungled this whole thing. Am I being the slightest bit clear?" 

"As clear as mud, Valancy, but I think I understand you in any case."

"Then you don't mind? Because, Barney, I do want to have everything with you for as long as I can have it, but I just cant risk a baby."

"Of course I don't mind!" Then Barney leaned forward conspiratorially. "You know, I'm not such a criminal as your kith and kin believe, but I may have learned a thing or two while I've been out and about."

Valancy stared at him. "A thing or two about what?"

Barney ran a hand through his hair, but forged ahead. "About avoiding children while still being close."

"How?"

"Well, there are several ways, but I have one in particular in mind." And then he told her. He watched the emotions flicker over that funny face of hers, until she seemed to settle on one that he'd seen on her since the beginning of their acquaintance: determination. 

"What do you say?" he asked, suddenly feeling a touch of anxiety for the first time that night. If Barney had let himself think about it, he might have really caught a bad case of nerves. He'd never touched a woman who wanted to go to her grave with his kiss the last on her lips. 

But Barney wasn't dwelling on the philosophical just now, only waiting for Valancy's answer. 

"And you would like it?" she asked, her last reservation.

Barney smiled. "I certainly wouldn't mind. And you could return the favor sometime, if it strikes your fancy."

"Well, then, yes,"she said, smiling too, and he kissed her again, but didn't stop at her lips. After a few moments her neck was next. Then -- after clumsily divesting themselves of their remaining clothes -- her breasts and belly and then the next place where he lingered for a long time.

A wonderfully long time.

The next morning was a strange luxury. Barney awakened with a woman in his arms and felt as warm as a cat napping in a sunbeam. And then the thought followed that he would wake the same way tomorrow morning, and the morning after that. Barney was finding it a bit much to wrap his head around.

As if stirred to activity by Barney simply thinking the word 'cat,' Good Luck mewed from across the room. Banjo chimed in his opinion as well.

"You impatient beasts! You'll get your breakfast soon," Barney said from under the covers, content next to Valancy. He wasn't a man to be rushed, and he was even less inclined to hurry today. Though it was a two-room cabin, the kitchen seemed a million miles away. Everything seemed a million miles away.

It was Valancy that got out of bed first, in the end. She pleaded the call of nature as she extricated herself from his sleepy arms, as well as a desire for porridge and eggs.

Well, he couldn't deny her those, of course, and decided to simply stretch and enjoy watching as she climbed naked out of bed to greet the day. Just before Valancy pulled on her drawers, Barney noticed a patch of red stubble burn on the insides of her thighs. Faint, but present. He rasped his hand along the now three-days worth of growth on his chin, pretty rough stuff. He guessed it was going to have to go -- he'd have to start shaving every day. No real matter, he thought, Valancy liked it better that way anyway, and sometimes she was the only one who saw him all day, so he allowed her opinion a little more weight.

Now, where had he put his razor again?

* * *

**FALL**

Barney was propped up against the headboard with a pillow behind his back, Valancy was draped along him, her back to his front. The light of the half moon came in through the window enough that Barney could see her quick little gasps of breath, as well as feel them. All her muscles were terribly tight as she fought through the episode. Her eyes were closed. Banjo meowed mournfully from his chair, sensing the atmosphere in the room. 

Barney rubbed his hands up and down Valancy's upper arms and made soothing noises as best he could. He felt he was caring for animal caught in a trap that it could not escape no matter how much it struggled. He himself was little better than a mink or a fox now, for he could do nothing for her. And the trapper could return at any moment to collect her. 

It went on like that for nearly a half an hour. Waves of tensing pain that she could only endure going on and on, until, mercifully, they began to subside until she was tired and loose again in his arms. Barney crossed his arms over her chest and held her to him, appreciating every slow rise and fall of her chest. 

He hoped... what? He hoped that Valancy wouldn't die of course, but that was a pie-in-the-sky dream, so he had to hope for the next best thing. His eyes slid to the moon in the black night sky, and he wished that Valancy would still be alive a year from now. Just another year. She shouldn't follow Cecily Gay so quickly to the grave.

Barney sighed into Valancy's hair. He was tired of dead women. Let this one live just a little longer.

Valancy stirred in his arms. "That was a bad one."

"Yes," he agreed. It was the first time she'd acknowledged her condition since they'd been married. "Let's make it the last one for awhile, eh? We'll go to sleep and rest up."

"I'm not tired yet."

Barney gave her a pointed look. 

"Oh, all right, I might be physically drained, but I don't want to go to sleep just yet."

"And what did you have in mind instead?"

At this, Valancy brought her right hand up and behind her to run through his hair and along the back of his neck. 

"Sure you're up for it, Moonlight?" He had to ask, though he was loathe to do it. It skirted the edge of the promise he made never to worry over her illness, even if she had brought it up this time. He paired the question with two light slaps on the shoulder to make it seem more chummy than fretful.

As her answer, Valancy retrieved his hand from her upper arm and brought it to her lips to kiss his knuckles in a shockingly sweet movement. Her next act of moving his same hand to rest very low on her stomach was well-taken by Barney. He kissed the line of her jaw, then down her neck, trying to push the too-recent memory of her pain out of his mind. No sense crying over spilled milk, he tried to tell himself. No sense in mucking up whatever time she had left with hesitation and worry. Cecily had hated all that fussing and he knew Valancy did too, so he pushed it away. Pushed it outside into the dark where it would likely only grow bigger and wilder and ambush him on the trail some bleak future night. His next kiss was harder.

Valancy turned so Barney could capture her lips. He obliged her with gusto, and as he kissed her, his hand slid lower as he kissed along her temple, until Valancy got exactly what she wanted. 

In some ways, what followed was not so different than the attack that came before. The heavy breathing, the murmuring, Valancy's body tensing all over.

But even Good Luck and Banjo knew the difference, and the latter closed his eyes and went to sleep, bored of the two humans' antics already.

* * *

**SPRING**

After the train, he saw how stupid he was. How tremendously, selfishly, hideously stupid he was. 

He'd felt Valancy's heart race before when he'd had his head between her legs. He'd heard he little panting gasps when she would pull back for a breather and look up at him when she was returning the favor.

Had he really risked her life for a little bit of pleasure? There had been enough pleasure to sustain themselves for a thousand years in just the wild places of the forests and lakes, and each other's company. 

My god, how could he have been so damnably stupid?

At the time, it had seemed like a gift to both of them. A way for Valancy to live a little, at long last, even if it shortened her doomed life by a week or two. A way for her to feel even better at night after their long, wonderful days spent under the sky. 

But now the idea of one less week with Valancy curdled his stomach. He wanted every second. Every single terribly lovely second. 

Barney looked around at his lifeless workshop. He wanted to dash his pens and papers to the floor, to rip up every page of "John Foster's" writing he could find. But the ruckus might disturb Valancy, and in any case, there wasn't time for that -- he had work to do. 

Barney sat down at his workspace and roughly pushed his latest notes to the side, grabbing a new sheet of paper. Connections, resources, cities; anything he could think of to help Valancy was scrawled onto the paper. Then he set about working the mess into an actual plan for getting Valancy top-notch care. 

He felt a little calmer after he finished. There was at least something he could do here, even if it were only getting Valancy audiences with the best cardiologists in Canada. 

The endless present they'd been living in these past months was no longer enough. Valancy needed a future. And he would hope for one for her, even if she would not hope for herself.

* * *

**SUMMER, AGAIN**

After, when she really was his wife, they coupled in the way that all of their neighbors had thought they'd done a year ago. Barney's heart had beat so shockingly fast when he'd entered her, almost as much for what this meant than for the pure physical sensations. But this was not what made her his wife.

It was maps of Italy spread out on the table. It was the apple tree they'd planted by the group of stones. It was the canoe they were building for next year.

And then it was even more than that, past the point of articulation. Valancy might have teased him -- a writer who couldn't describe his own wife? -- but there it was. Nature was indescribable, though he always tried. Valancy was indescribable too.

"The steamer will be leaving tomorrow morning at nine sharp. We’ll be leagues out to sea by this time tomorrow. You ready, girl?” he yelled at her over the familiar roar of Lady Jane as they peeled away from Georgiana Stirling's house after dropping off Banjo and Good Luck.

Valancy's short hair flew back wildly in the wind. Her strange eyes though, stared right back into his. His right hand on the wheel was suddenly warm as she covered it with hers. “Completely, Barney.”

Barney’s eyes flicked back to the road only because they had to, but he could feel her eyes on him, her hand on him. Maybe there would be a baby, in time, maybe there wouldn't. But they didn't have to be afraid of the days to come anymore, whatever they would bring.


End file.
